Presents examples to substantiate the observation that children experiment with and benefit from writing long before they receive formal instruction, and suggests ways for parents and teachers to avoid obstructing this natural and healthy tendency. (HTH)

The nature of meaning as it is developed through interaction between individuals is explored in a discussion of how writers lead readers to understand a text. (DF)

Describes a study which explored developmental changes in preschoolers' knowledge of the writing system. The children were asked to write four utterances without knowing the purpose of the request and without additional explanations. The purpose was to determine how early children's graphic responses in decontextualized situations have features of…

Discusses efforts at teaching children in kindergarten how to write, indicating that emergent readers can indeed write with scribbles, random letters, numerals, and sometimes words. Discusses their dictation, journal content, writing stages, and developmental trends. (HTH)

Offers an interpretive frame for viewing children's growth as creators of imaginative worlds. Suggests that writing development depends not only on children's discovery of cognitive and linguistic strategies but on children's discovery that writing can help authors create coherence in their worlds beyond texts. (MS)

Explores the patterns in children's talk about their writing, by means of transcribed conversations during daily writing/sharing sessions in a first grade classroom. Discusses the importance of this kind of talk. (HTH)

Reports on a recent study of first grade writing efforts that confirms the importance of scribble in the writing process when it is an accepted language behavior in the classroom. (FL)

Tests were given to a nine-year-old boy to establish the constraints operating when he was writing poetry. The tests involved writing cloze tests on poems by poet Ted Hughes and on a poem the boy had written a year earlier. The boy was also asked to write a poem and then to discuss what he was thinking as he wrote. The following constraints were…

Claims that the term "process writing" is used indiscriminately to describe both the naturalistic approach to learning how to write and the process of selecting a topic, drafting, conferencing, and publishing. Suggests that writing to publish should not be the only writing children do. (SRT)

Explores (from the point of view of the writer, a children's author) one aspect of learning about language that is present in the picture books he writes: the relation between sound and sense. (SR)

A study was conducted to identify characteristics of young children's written compositions that might be used to indicate growth patterns. Written compositions of 482 children of all ability levels, grades 1-3, were examined by two teams of teacher-researchers and placed on a continuum of sophistication. Four growth strands were identified: (1)…

Examines the meanings young children express in talk, pictures, and written text, focusing on the integration of the three. Findings illustrate children's exploration of imagined worlds through drawing and talk and the potential problems children face in transferring those worlds to text. (SRT)

Describes a two-day residence in a fifth- and sixth-grade classroom of poet Arnold Adoff. Presents his interaction with five students as they struggle with their poetry writing. (HTH)

Describes the interrelationship of reading and writing and proposes a full-school program for reading and writing development that builds on the full range of personal use of written language. (JL)

The intricate quilt pattern of child language development can be pieced together from the numerous swatches of each child's language fabric which have been gathered by watching, looking, and listening when young children write. The necessity of watching, looking, and listening is demonstrated by the example of a preschooler's verbal protocol which…